Business News

23.03.2011

EUR 89M New NLB Shares Paid Up in First Round of
Subscription

Ljubljana, 22 March (STA) - Thirty-nine existing shareholders of the NLB bank paid up just over EUR 89m worth of new shares in the first round of subscription for a EUR 250m share issue at Slovenia's biggest bank, which ended on Monday. The state paid up EUR 82.7m worth of fresh shares, while the Belgian KBC bank paid up less than EUR 5m.

According to Tuesday's press release from the bank, 39 shareholders paid up a total of 768,596 shares in the emission value of EUR 89,157,136, or 35.66% of the share issue.

In the first round of subscription, only existing shareholders had the right to purchase shares at EUR 116 apiece pro rata to their existing holdings.

The remaining 1,386,577 shares will be offered to domestic and foreign investors. The second round of subscription will be launched on Wednesday, to run until 30 March.

In case of excessive subscription, the individual subscriber from the second round will be allotted new shares in the same ratio to the shares the investor paid up in the second round as is the number of available new shares in the second round to the number of all shares paid up in this round.

The state, which owns a 33.1% stake in the bank, subscribed for and paid up EUR 82.7m worth of new shares in the first round, the Finance Ministry said on Monday.

The ministry could not say what the final sum of the money made available from the state budget for the capital raising would be, as it would depend on the results of both rounds of subscription.

The KBC bank, which as a 30.57% owner of NLB, could have subscribed for EUR 76.4m worth of new shares, subscribed for and paid up 42,648 shares worth EUR 4.95m, the Belgian financial group told the STA today.

This means that the Belgian bank's interest in NLB will probably decrease once the capital raising is completed. The state-run KAD and SOD funds did not participate in the first round of subscription.